Dr. Helen

Commentary on popular culture and society, from a (mostly) psychological perspective

Saturday, June 21, 2008

Tough Love Needed

Rachel Lucas: "If you’re a 16-year-old girl and you have sex with a homeless man with the express PURPOSE of becoming pregnant, I am judging your ass off. Judge, judge, judging. I think you should be ashamed of yourself and that you should be embarrassed. Maybe feeling that way will help you learn a lesson that you so obviously need to learn."

It seems that girls at a Massachusetts high school made a pact to get pregnant together. Actually, it isn't just getting pregnant that teenage girls make destructive pacts about, it's other things--like cutting or becoming anorexic together. Too few adults in the world of these girls are sending them the message that what they are doing and thinking is stupid. The media and much of our culture is blaring the message non-stop that they are cool. Who do you think they are listening to? I would love to see Ms. Lucas in the role of school counselor to these girls--can't you just imagine the group therapy she would provide?

Thursday, June 19, 2008

Interview with Kathleen Parker

Kathleen Parker is a columnist and author of Save the Males: Why Men Matter Why Women Should Care. While I am not crazy about the title (it implies that men are victims in need of saving and only because women are involved), the content in this book is worth a read by anyone who thinks that men are still in charge of society and by those who already know differently. Far from focusing on men being victims, Parker brings to light the need to fight unfair laws and societal trends that lead to a loss of freedom and autonomy for men and harms families and children.

Parker discusses the lower rates of men in college, domestic violence, what the Presidential candidates need to know about fatherhood, and whether the Democrats have become the party of girly-men.

More Double Standards

RightGirl emails a story from the Daily Mail entitled, "How DARE anyone make excuses for fathers who murder their own children." Funny, "feminists" make this excuse for women who kill their kids all the time as does the writer of this article:

In fact, of all children killed by a parent, half are killed by their mothers. But the difference is that men, as shown by the examples above, are known to be able to kill out of spite.

When women kill their children, they almost always do it because they are mentally ill.

In most cases, they are suffering from post-natal depression; in others, they have undiagnosed diseases such as schizophrenia.

Indeed, so much is this the rule of thumb that even in Texas, where they love to hang 'em high and psychology is regarded with suspicion, the last four women who killed their children were spared death row by reason of insanity. Women, in short, love their children differently.

So men kill out of spite only and women kill because they are mentally ill. Has this writer ever heard of Susan Smith who allegedly disposed of her children so that she might have a relationship with a wealthy local man who had no interest in a "ready-made" family? The author of the Daily Mail article, Carol Sarler, may call Smith's actions "loving her children differently," I call them selfish, cruel and yes, spiteful.

.....there is an alarmingly high rate of sexual abuse by females in the backgrounds of rapists, sex offenders and sexually aggressive men - 59% (Petrovich and Templer, 1984), 66% (Groth, 1979) and 80% (Briere and Smiljanich, 1993). A strong case for the need to identify female perpetrators can be found in Table 4, which presents the findings from a study of adolescent sex offenders by O'Brien (1989). Male adolescent sex offenders abused by "females only" chose female victims almost exclusively.

My guess is that some of these rapists who have been abused by women are mentally ill and this illness plays a part in their decision to rape. Maybe there should be some excuse for male rapists like "Abused by Female Rapist Syndrome" just as there is the "Battered Women's Syndrome" as an excuse for women who kill their husbands. We all know that it would be a cold day in hell before that happens. And perhaps it shouldn't.

But neither should we make blanket statements about women who kill or commit atrocious acts. To say that they always act out of mental illness is to imply that women cannot be held accountable for their actions, that they are children or too mentally disturbed to know what they are doing or to be held accountable. This view has its downside. If this is the case, then women are too crazy to vote, make serious decisions or engage fully in life as autonomous human beings. Women have a full range of human emotions and actions, just as men do. We should not automatically excuse behavior because the perpetrator is female nor should we always find men guilty because they are male.

Wednesday, June 18, 2008

Afternoon Snack

Well, I finally have some results from my Earth Box garden kit. As I mentioned here, I grew strawberries and tomatoes, without much hope of success due to my black thumb. Although the produce is small and a bit funny looking, I think I did pretty well. At least I have an afternoon snack that I grew myself and am pretty sure won't give me salmonella (even if it is a bit unattractive). Maybe if the outbreak gets worse, I could sell my fresh tomatoes on ebay to the highest bidder. I don't think the tiny strawberry will make the cut on the open market but it is really cute--don't you think?

Do stats really reveal how many husbands are killed by wives?

Police may have ignored a warning years ago that a woman with five dead spouses was trying to hire a hit man to kill one of the men, investigators in North Carolina said Monday.

Authorities charged 76-year-old Betty Neumar last month with one count of solicitation of murder in the July 1986 death of Harold Gentry. Gentry's brother had begged investigators for two decades to take another look at the case.

Stanly County sheriff's investigators believe Neumar tried to hire several people to kill Gentry. Lead detective Scott Williams said Monday his office is looking into the possibility that one of those would-be hit men went to authorities before Gentry's death, but no one took him seriously....

Neumar has been married five times since the 1950s, but each union ended with the death of her husband. Investigators want authorities elsewhere to look into the deaths. Williams said investigators have uncovered a common link among the victims: They all had military experience.

I wonder if this woman was hooking up with these military men to get their VA benefits? And five dead husbands before anyone figures something is going on? And Neumar is only charged with one count of solicitation for murder. If she killed the other four, do the stats reflect this? I doubt it.

Monday, June 16, 2008

"Carnival" of Misandry

I often receive many interesting tips and links from readers on male bashing and abuse but I can't post on all of them since I would be here 24/7 to do so and would need a huge staff! I have been reading Kathleen Parker's Save the Males: Why Men Matter Why Women Should Care for an upcoming podcast and thought this carnival seemed fitting in light of her research. Here are a few highlights that readers have found that I wanted to share with you:

Reader Jay emails in this news story from Denver on a woman who has been accused of stabbing people over the course of 21 years:

A woman suspected of stabbing a man to death this week has a 21-year history of threatening people with knives and was twice charged with attempted murder for stabbing her husband.

Audrey Eve Cahow, 51, was arrested Thursday for investigation of the first-degree in the death of Anthony Martinez, 62, Denver police spokesman John White said.

Investigators believe Cahow and Martinez were arguing when Cahow stabbed him. Martinez died of a single stab wound to the chest and heart.

In 1987, Cahow was charged with attempted murder for stabbing her husband, Paul Vaughn, who was then 62. She pleaded guilty to second-degree assault and sentenced to two years' probation.

Three years later, police said she admitted stabbing Vaughn five times after he pointed his finger in her face. She again pleaded guilty to assault and was sentenced to six years of intensive probation.

Yep, pointing that finger in her face justified her husband getting stabbed and of course, a two year probation and then six whole years of probation really taught her a lesson, so much so that she went on to kill a subsequent husband. Kudos to our legal system and their "egalitarian" approach to domestic violence.

Another reader sends in this story from The Wall Street Journal. It seems that men's computer coding is inferior to women's coding and must be replaced:

We all know men hate to ask for directions. Apparently they loathe putting directions in computer code, too.

Emma McGrattan, the senior vice-president of engineering for computer-database company Ingres–and one of Silicon Valley’s highest-ranking female programmers–insists that men and women write code differently. Women are more touchy-feely and considerate of those who will use the code later, she says. They’ll intersperse their code–those strings of instructions that result in nifty applications and programs–with helpful comments and directions, explaining why they wrote the lines the way they did and exactly how they did it.....

There’s a big need to fix testosterone-fueled code at Ingres because only about 20% of the engineers are women, McGrattan says. (Most of them are in jobs involving quality assurance or adapting the product to a new locale, she says, and not the “heavy lifting” of writing code.) She’s on a mission to get more women interested in computer-programming careers. But “it’s proving very challenging,” she says.

Women good, men bad...even their coding is proof of that!

Reader Eric writes in to point out that Glamour magazine patronizes men in their posts about Mother's Day and Father's Day. "These posts," Eric states "have become opportunities to fix what's wrong with men." The writer, Rebecca Roberts, states in a post entitled "Father's Day Wishes":

On Mothers' Day, I wrote that I believe the responsibility of raising boys to respect women is as important as raising girls to respect themselves. This Fathers' Day, I've been thinking about fathers and daughters, and the responsibility fathers have to raise unapologetically ambitious, fearless girls.

In addition to being patronizing, it seems to me that the Glamour writer has no clue that on Father's Day, men actually have sons as well as daughters but everything is about what is "best" for girls and women-- boys and men are simply objects whose sole purpose is to help girls become the President of the US or learn to respect themselves.

A college student who branded a date's body with a scalding piece of metal as payback for never calling her after they had sex was sentenced to five years in prison Friday.

Kristina Caban, 23, had no comment as state Supreme Court Justice Michael Obus sentenced her for what he called a crime that was "not remotely justifiable."

Assistant District Attorney Nicole Blumberg told Obus that Caban was the "mastermind behind the plan" to sear the torso of Samir "Sammy" Sara, then 23, for having sex with her once in 2004 and never calling her again.

At least the Supreme Court Justice had some sense and gave her jail time.

When women and the media go on about how sexist and abusive men are, I wonder if they overlooked these stories? Of course, they will say that these "tales" are an aberration but if my inbox is any indication, this could not be further from the truth.